Whew! I can stop holding my breath now...hurricane Irma is gone and luckily, I have no damage to my house or yard just a lot of leaves and small tree branches strewn everywhere. And...I HAVE POWER! I am so fortunate!
Many of my friends and family are still waiting for the electricity to be restored and are waiting in temperatures of 91 deg. Fahrenheit or above. Our State has never seen anything like this in our history and are just now beginning to understand its impacts. To give you an idea: All services have been interrupted and many people can not go back to their jobs because of the power outages. Streets are cluttered with yard waste waiting for the Cities and Counties to pick up the residue. Grocery stores had to throw out all refrigerated items due to spoilage and are waiting for the trucks to arrive in order to restock. Some areas are told to conserve water by limiting showers and flushing toilets and to boil drinking water (I am not one of them thank goodness). Many areas will not be able to rebuild without adhering to stricter and more costly building codes. This storm was a monster and its impact will be felt for a long time by many.
I was too nervous to do any drawing during the storm and now that it is past, it's time to get back to normal. So here goes...Pumpkin girl was created using good old dependable Prismacolor pencils. My "go to" medium for coloring my whimsical girls. I love how the colors build up into a creamy satin finish. For more information on how I use prismacolor pencils go here.
I like to sketch my faces in pencil first because it allows me a lot of tweaking with the eraser. I am not trying to get an exact likeness but I am trying to get some kind of resemblance to the inspiration photo.
Once I obtained the look that I was going for, I outlined the drawing using a Copic fineliner sepia pen. Then I erased the pencil lines. Prismacolors and pencil graphite don't mix, they will smear and muddy your colors, so the sepia ink works better. The ink is permanent and it gives you an outline but yet it is light enough to be covered by the colored pencil.
Hope you enjoyed "Pumpkin Girl." I can't show you my inspiration photo on this one as I actually snapped a picture of this girl from the TV. I thought that she has the most interesting face shape and features. Perfect for drawing a whimsical character.
Until next time.....
Hugs,
Ginny
